


love letter to the office

by sepiaparrish



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Friendship, Gen, but i adore the concept so maybe i'll rewrite it one day or add on or smthing, haha i rlly don't like how this turned out, setting: juno and rita's office
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28746834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepiaparrish/pseuds/sepiaparrish
Summary: written for the penumbra network's second event! a series of scenes set in Juno and Rita's office :)
Relationships: Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	love letter to the office

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello!! this was written for the penumbra network's second event, you can follow us on @thepenumbranet on tumblr!!!

Their first day in the office they discovered the ceiling had a hole in it. The upstairs neighbor had put carpet over top of it, this little smaller-than-a-hand sized hole in the ceiling, so it hadn’t really been noticeable before. Rita saw it first while she was standing on her chair with a broom, getting rid of a spiderweb in the corner of the room. Juno simply added it to the list, yet another chore they had to do. 

They carried in two desks and two chairs, a filing cabinet (although Rita insisted it would be easier to store the files on her computer), Rita’s computers, and a box of old documents for Juno to go through, and then they were set. And it was empty, and clean, and new.

Rita got bored in about ten minutes.

“Ughhhh Bossssss!” she was seated on the floor beside her perfectly good chair, her comms next to her blaring the song she'd been singing nonstop for days “galaxy flamingo and rubber duck” “Has someone called with a case yettttt,” 

“No, and it’s been less than a minute since you asked that.” Juno was also seated on the floor, in theory he was there rather than in his office because he was rearranging the filing cabinet, in actuality it was because he was bored too, and wanted to hang out with Rita. 

“Well I just want us to be successful and we can’t really do that if we don’t-”

_ Ringggg! _

They exchanged looks, then both dove for the office comms. 

“Boss!! Mistah Steel I’m the secretary here!!” 

“Yeah but I’m,” he grunted as Rita elbowed him in the side. “the detective-” 

Rita turned the comms on. “Hello!! Mistah Steel, p.i., this is his secretary Rrrrrita speaking!”

“Good afternoon. If you are hearing this, you may be entitled to free-”

Juno reached over Rita’s shoulder and shut off the comms. 

“Oh boss, I wanted to hear what free thing we might be entitled to!”

“It was a scam,”

“That’s mighty jump to conclusions of you Mistah Steel! You’re probably right, but it would be fun if we actually won a hamster or something.”

“A hamster? Rita, where would we keep a hamster? Why would we  _ want  _ a hamster?” He went back to sit by the filing cabinet.

“I dunno boss, but all this talk of ham is making me hungry.” 

“Yeah?”

“Wanna order something to eat while we sit here and wait and wait and wait for a case? And should I turn the music back on?”

“No more music by the Martian Meese.”

And that was how they ended their first day at the office, still waiting for a case, seated on the floor with takeout and bickering over music choice. 

\------

Four or five little cases had been finished, and their business gaining a bit of reputation, when a few months later Rita came waltzing into Juno’s little office with such energy that he startled and knocked his stapler off his desk, it hit the floor with a crash as Juno nearly jumped out of his seat.  


“Hiya Mistah Steel!!”

“Goddamn it, Rita, give a lady some warning before bursting into his office will you?”

“Sorry boss,” she was grinning ear to ear and hopping from foot to foot.

“What did you do.” He narrowed his eyes at her, she was doing her “I’ve done something that you will pretend to hate or maybe actually hate but you can’t get really mad because I’m adorable and you love me” face. 

“Why boss, I don’t know WHAT you mean...” she giggled. 

“Rita, WHAT did you DO.”

“Ohhh come see!!!” she ran back out into the main room cackling. 

Juno followed close at her heels, praying she hadn’t brought another stray cat in. He couldn’t handle having to convince Rita to give up another cat.   


She hadn’t. She had, actually, brought in something much bigger. A couch, two more chairs, a coffee table, and a big monitor. So more than one something much bigger. 

“Rita, we don’t have money for this!”

“Maybe you don’t Mistah Steel, but I! Asked Franny to ask her friends if they had any furniture they were getting rid of and her friends asked their friends and here you have it! And! I’m tireeeed of sitting at a desk chair all day.”

“You don’t ever use your chair!”

“Too late boss, I already brought them in here.”

“Well put them back!” 

“Noooo bossss! It took ever so long to get them up here and Franny already left and she was the real muscle of the operation plus I really think this could be good! It adds to the personality of the office,” she grabbed his arm and tugged him over to the couch. “Just try the couch before trying to get rid of it,”

“I’m not going to-” he sat down. “Oh,”

“Yes boss?” she grinned smugly at him.

“This is actually pretty comfortable.”

“I told you you’d like it!” she sat down next to him, bouncing a little.

“Hmph.” 

“Wanna watch a stream with me, Mistah Steel,” she grinned her most do-as-i-say-because-you-love-me grin. 

“No. I have work.”

“What work!? You finished your last case three days ago boss!” He started to stand up and she latched onto his arm. “Please please please Mistah Steel!! Just one stream just one teeny weeny episode please!”

“Fine. But nothing stupid.”

“YES!” she ran to turn the monitor on.

“What are we watching.” He played with a piece of hair at the nape of his neck.

“Galactic Kitties vs Tiny Dragons: Underwater,” 

“Rita! I said nothing stupid!”

  
\------

Their office had lots of weird little quirks and flaws, the doors creaked like crazy, so Juno oiled the hinges. The windows wouldn’t open the first time until Rita had wrestled with them for hours, and they sometimes still got stuck. Every second Tuesday it was freezing so they had to wear extra layers and they never could figure out why. But they liked it, it was theirs. When the sun had first rose or had started to set, the windows that still didn’t have curtains cast lovely lights on the walls, and sometimes when there was no work to be done Juno would sit at his desk and watch the light change. It felt a little like a home. 

\------

“Agent Rrrrrrita! With my dazzling smile, charms, and wit, I will succeed on this mission! Of course, I can't go anywhere without my trusted blaster at my side! Pew pew!”

_ BANG. _

“Uhoh.” 

There was a hole in the wall. Rita looked from the blaster in her hand, to the scorched wall and back again. With a yelp, she dropped the blaster, which went off a second time, shooting another hole in the wall. She crouched down next to it. 

“Well this is a pickle.”

“RITA!”

“Oh no!”

Juno came out of his office “What the hell is going on in-” he took in the scene. “Here…” 

She looked at him, he looked at the blaster, the wall, the coffee table.

“Why is my blaster on the floor.”

“Oh well boss you see, well, you left it on the coffee table and I was just moving it to um. To a safer place, yeah! And um on the way there it went off and then I dropped it and well…”

“Rita I could hear you recreating your stream from my office.”

“Oh.”

“Damnit!” he went over to examine the wall. On his way there he scooped up the blaster and turned the safety on. It wasn’t horrible, it looked as though it hadn’t even gone all the way through the wall, but there was a scorch mark bigger than the size of his hand surrounding the hole. “Come on,” he headed to the door.

“Um, boss, where are we going?” Rita asked nervously as she put on her heels and he pulled on his boots. 

“To get paint.”

The store didn’t have the same blue that the walls were. They ended up picking purple paint, enough for the whole wall.

“It’ll be an _accent_ wall, Mistah Steel!! Franny told me all about those, she has one in her apartment and she likes to watch those home renovation streams. I watched her favorite with her, ‘Extreme Home Renovation With Lava Two: The Reckoning’ it’s VERY good! Do you think we should just renovate the whole office while we’re at it? Maybe get some new nice wood floors instead of the warped ones we have now? Maybe put in counters and cabinets? We could have a tiny kitchen!” 

“Rita,”

“We could get new furniture and everything! Oh, boss, it’ll be so nice!”

“RITA!”

“Yeah boss?”

“We’re not renovating the office, shut up.”

“Right boss.” 

It wasn’t too long before they realized they weren’t quite sure of what they were doing. They’d put down some towels on the floor, but only after they’d gotten a few splatters of paint on the floor. They’d opened up the windows, and the cold air was making them shiver, and thus far they’d only done a little bit of the wall up in the upper right corner. The paint smelled horrid.

“Hey boss?”

“Yeah Rita?”

“What if we just cover up the scorch mark and then we can do the rest another day?”   
“Yknow, I was just thinking that.”

It took them a while but eventually the little spots were covered up sufficiently, and they were both covered in purple splatters. A funny little purple dot stood out against Rita’s nose and Juno’s poor trench coat had to be scrubbed in the bathroom sink because of a dark purple stain on the hem. 

They never did get around to repainting the whole wall, so three little poorly painted polka dots stayed prominently splayed against the backdrop of blue. They’d also forgotten to fill in the holes before painting, so Rita sometimes stuck her finger in the hole of one of them and pretended the wall was eating her. Juno didn’t leave his blaster on the table anymore, except when he did, and then Rita didn’t use it to recreate streams. Or, she didn’t use it for streams when Juno was around, at least. 

\-----

“Rita what’s this?”

“A coffee maker.”

“Ok, _ why’s _ this, then.”

“Because I’m sick of having to drive to go get coffee every morning, Mistah Steel! You _ said  _ we’d split that responsibility but when you get it it’s gross because you can’t drive to the good coffee place so it’s really always my responsibility boss and I don’t even really like coffee that much and Franny was throwing her old one out because she got a newer model and she gave it to me, and I already have a coffee maker in my apartment, so I brought it here.” Rita ran her thumb over the rhinestones on the corner of her glasses as she spoke.

“And the mugs?” 

Two mugs sat next to the coffee maker, both neon orange. They read #1 boss and #1 secretary. 

“Oh boss do you like them? I had Franny customize them for me! You’d be shocked at how difficult it is to find #1 secretary mugs. Want to help me figure out how to use this thing? I’m realizing I'm not sure where the coffee goes on this one, it’s different than the one I own.”

“Sure.”

\------

Every now and again, when business was slow, they would find themselves behaving like dumb kids again. Juno often marveled at the fact they hadn’t known each other as teens. Being friends with Rita sometimes reminded him of the dumb stunts he would pull with Mick and Sasha and-

It wasn’t ever as dangerous as it was when he was younger, but it was usually just as fun. 

Rita’s office chair was one of those ones that spun, and had wheels, and they took full advantage of it. Be it spinning each other around and around and giggling like they were small again, or coming up with faster and faster ways of going from one end of the office to the other without touching their feet to the ground and timing each other, the loser having to do all the filing for a month, or even just taking turns sitting in it while the other pushed it around the room.

“I wish I’d known you when I was a kid,” Juno confided, once. It was perhaps the most honest thing he’d said to Rita in a long while, if ever.

“ _Awww_ boss,” Rita grinned at him, eyes welling up. She was spinning the chair with Juno in it with all her might. “Then we did. We’ve been friends always,” she spun the chair one last time, a little too energetically. The chair started to tip and Juno scrambled to his feet.

They looked from the overturned chair to each other, then broke into giggles.

“My turn Mistah Steel!”

\------

It was late. Rita was still at her desk, filing away different information from Juno’s most recent cases in her computer and watching “Jupiter Werewolves Three: Forbidden Romance”. The credits rolled and she checked the clock. MUCH too late to be heading home. She went to knock on Juno’s door, his light was still on.

“Um, Mistah Steel? Are you awake in there?” 

“Yeah, come in.”

He didn’t look awake. He was staring at his stapler, arms resting on the desk and chin resting on his arms. He looked simultaneously half asleep and half to tears.

“Are you ok Mistah Steel?”

“Fine. Are you heading home?” 

“Actually Mistah Steel I was going to crash on the couch tonight. I don’t feel like walking home alone in the dark.”

“Oh, uh-” He sat up, hand reaching up to fiddle with one of his earrings.

“Unless that’s a problem boss?”

“No uh it’s fine it’s just,”

“Just?”

“Well I wasn’t planning on going home tonight either, I was going to sleep on the couch but I guess-”

“Oh sorry boss, I didn’t know! I guess I could call Franny and have her keep me company on the way home,”

“No, you called dibs first I’ll just-” 

“Nonsense Mistah Steel this is your office!”

“You paid for it!” 

“Yeah but-”

“No I really think-”

“MISTAH STEEL!”

They both fell silent, looking at each other.

“Mistah Steel, why don’t we both sleep here tonight. I can run downstairs and ask Miss Vine if we can borrow a few blankets and we can make a bed on the floor for one of us.”

“Yeah,” Juno sighed, his shoulders relaxing. “Yeah that sounds like a good plan.”

“Mistah Steel” Rita whispered. They had both ended up sleeping on the floor, as both had tried to give up the couch for the other and finally come to the conclusion that sharing the floor was easier. They’d made little beds for themselves with the couch cushions and blankets borrowed from their neighbor. 

“ _Mistah Steeeeel_!” she hissed again. “Are you awake?”

“I am  _ now _ ,” Juno grumbled, burrowing his face further under the covers.

“Sorry boss, I was just thinking about how this is like those sleepovers the kids used to have, did you ever go to one of those Mistah Steel?”

“Yeah,”

“Really boss? What were they like?”

“Rita are you telling me you’ve never been to a sleepover?”

“Not a single one!”

He looked at her. The faint light from the theia spectrum cast golden light, allowing her to see his face, even if it was covered in strange shadows. 

“You aren’t missing much. Not a lot of sleeping, too much talking.” 

“Those sound fun,” Rita yawned. They fell silent for a bit. “You know those glow in the dark stars? Did you ever have some as a kid, Mistah Steel?”

“The ones they put on ceilings?”

“Yeah,”

“Yeah.”

“Hm.”

They’d both almost fallen asleep when Rita spoke again.

“We should get glow in the dark stars for the office...and sleeping bags for if we ever do this again.” 

“Yeah, that’d be nice.”

“I’m glad my first sleepover was with you Mistah Steel, goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Rita.”

A week after that when Rita showed up to work she found a box of glow in the dark stars on her desk, and sleeping bags under the coffee table. She smiled, then went to make Juno help her stick the stars on the ceiling properly.

\-------

They were leaving in a minute. Off on a new adventure, Juno Steel and Rrrrrita! Joining a crime family in space! They’d talked about having adventures in space before, of course! But it had always been hypothetical, and they’d always still been detectives. And now they were looking at the office one last time, standing in the door frame, taking in the hole in the ceiling they’d never fixed, the mismatched purple splotches of paint on the wall, the dent in the floor from an incident with the filing cabinet. 

“We had some good times here, huh boss?” Rita asked nervously. She had grabbed his forearm a minute or so ago, and was now clutching it like it was the only thing keeping her upright.

“Yeah.” His voice was quiet. She looked over at him and took note of how still he was keeping, eye fixed on a point in the middle distance. 

“I’m going to miss it,” she said, hesitantly.

“It’s like our _home._ ” he responded, his free hand going to scratch at the back of his neck. “What if this is a mistake, Rita? What if we leave and it doesn’t work out. I know you want to come, I’m so glad you do, I don’t think I could leave without you but...our whole life is here and- I don’t know. I feel bad taking you with me, you shouldn’t have to-”

“We’ll make a new home.” She smiled at him, he smiled back, hesitantly. It was the best smile in the galaxy, in her opinion. Except for maybe Particia Marlowe’s. “Don’t worry Mistah Steel, if space adventuring doesn’t work out we can always come back. Even if this isn’t our office anymore, that’s ok!”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. You’re sure you don’t want to bring the glow in the dark stars?”

“No, it adds character to the office, the next owner will like them.”

“Right. Ready to go?”

“Yeah Mistah Steel, let’s go. Goodbye office!”

“Goodbye office.”

They shut the door.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it!! kudos and comments mean the world to me :) thanks very much to the other wonderful members of the penumbra network, you're all simply the coolest!!


End file.
